


Everybody's doing their time

by mahkent



Category: Everyman HYBRID
Genre: Depersonalization, Gen, POV Second Person, Sensory Overload
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-29 17:25:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16268912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mahkent/pseuds/mahkent
Summary: It’s in the driver’s seat, you’re in the goddamn trunk for all you can feel. Your body isn’t your own.





	Everybody's doing their time

Tingling in your limbs. Your body isn’t your own. The utter misunderstanding of how to move, a puppet with no strings, you’re so _alone_ in this body and you don’t know what to do.

Your body isn’t your own. Sensations are meaningless when they’re whisps just beyond your fingertips, unreachable through the fog that makes up your existence. Your body isn’t something that _exists_ to you because it isn’t yours, really.

You know the burning white heat of HABIT taking you over. You know it so well that it feels like home. It feels like something you should be used to, the heat torching your mind and reducing you to the blindness of the back of your mind as it runs you like a goddamn car. It’s in the driver’s seat, you’re in the goddamn trunk for all you can feel. Your body isn’t your own.

But sometimes you can feel. It trickles the sensations to you as they happen. A trickle that becomes a stream that becomes a river that becomes a flood, suddenly it’s all too _much_ because you aren’t really used to sensations anymore. Steph, under HABIT, HABIT took control in the middle of _sex_ and it’s doing such a good job playing you that you aren’t even really sure if you’re you, anymore. It’s moaning and shuddering and forcing its hips forward because Steph likes it rough, it’s pushing that plastic cock you strapped on with numb fingers deeper and deeper until she shudders around it and all you can do is watch through sheets and sheets of nothingness. Your body isn’t your own, and you can’t bear to think of whatever’s controlling you fucking your girlfriend even though she only said yes to _you_ doing that.

Your body isn’t your own. It isn’t yours, damnit, it stopped being yours when you realized you were losing hours and hours. Vinny would talk about something they did, or a conversation, and you didn’t _remember_. Hours then days then weeks then months. You lost so much, you weren’t living life because you were picking up pieces that weren’t yours. Someone _else_ was running your body. Someone else was fucking your girlfriend and bonding with your friends and pretending to be you.

Then you wake. You’re slumped against a tree with full sensation, when you look down your hands are sticky-slick red with someone else’s blood and you can taste meat in your mouth, there’s pieces stuck between your teeth that are vibrating you can feel them so _much_. Sensation is back with a vengeance. The bark against your back, bumpy and jagged, the dirt under your ass that’s soft and giving like your memory is. Your fingers covered in the goddamn blood that you don’t know the origin of.

Your head doesn’t feel empty. It feels too full, a hot-messy inability to focus because your brain keeps glitching and going empty at any moment where you think too hard. So you’re stuck standing, wiping your bloody hands off on your pants, and you’re forced to wander the forest. You wander through endless, endless trees and dirt and the smell of blood from your fucking hands. It feels like your mind- so full but so empty. Nothing’s in it, the birds flitting away like your thoughts, nothing’s there but crickets and dirt.

A long walk on legs you aren’t really cognizant of gets you home. You’re distantly aware of how they should ache, but it’s all meaningless when you haven’t been able to feel aches of pains properly anymore. You’re just as aware - still distant, still meaningless - that Vinny’s at your house, staying because you’ve been forgetful recently and he didn’t want you to be alone.

Of course, you’ve been forgetful for a while. You’ve lost so much time that your memory is utterly goddamn useless. You _can_ remember, though, each and every time you start talking about something only for your friends to tell you that you’ve already done so. You can remember every time they start talking about something like you should remember what the fuck they’re talking about, only for _them_ to realize you can’t remember. You’re used to their concern and disappointment at your failure.

Vinny swears up and down that it isn’t your fault. _Whatever’s making you forget, you should go get it checked out, Ev,_ he says. He keeps trying to fill you in on what you’ve missed but it just makes you more and more upset to know that you forgot. Vinny tries, damnit, he tries but you just _can’t_ remember anything. You can’t bring yourself to get it checked out, though; you’re too afraid of what the doctors could tell you.

They’d call you insane if you told them that you wake up with what might be nightmares with blood on your hands, meat in your teeth, and gnawed on bones in your hands. You’d be a psycho and they’d lock you away for years and years and it wouldn’t even _help_ , because you’d still black out and wake up in places you don’t know with the distant rumble of flesh ripping running through your fingertips. You’d still find new injuries on your body already partially healed even though you only blacked out for a few hours, you swear to god you only blacked out for a few _hours_.

When you get into the house you check the date. You have to, because sometimes you’ll wake up and it’ll suddenly be weeks since the last day you remember. This time, though? You turn on the computer because your phone is dead and you see the date. _November_. It’s November, and the last month you remember is fucking _January_. Eleven months. Eleven months entirely gone, a blankness of vague sensations of Steph’s thighs under your hands, Vinny’s hand in your own, Jeff’s shoulder against your own, dirt under your fingers, a shovel in your hands-

You don’t know what to do but turn around and hit the wall with all of your strength that’s just amplified with every second you’ve forgotten. Your fist burns, the bones ache as they slam into the wall but it doesn’t break because you can still feel your body weak from how little you’ve eaten recently. (You remember eating, of course, but does human meat under your teeth actually count as a meal?)

Vinny wakes when you hit the wall. You knew he would, the guy sleeps so light that he may as well not be asleep; when he comes running down the stairs you just stare at him. The mud on your bare feet, the blood on your hands, the desperate rage coursing through you, he notices it all in one swift glance. You notice that his beard is longer, now, his face is much more tired but he still seems so familiar that you start crying. 

You can't help it, really. You can't help that you start sobbing where you stand. It's just that your head is buzzing from everything you can feel- sticky mud around your feet, blood drying into flakes on your hands, your heart pounding in your chest like a frightened dog’s- is too much for you. You shudder where you stand, your body shakes and your knees give even as Vinny runs to grab you-

Vinny grabbing you is just more to deal with, though. His soft arms pressing around you doesn't ground you, they just add to the noise, his quiet murmurs of _Ev, you're safe, you're fine_ are howls in your ears. Your body is your own, now, but you aren’t sure you want it right now when the faintest brush of your clothing (that’s dried stiff with blood) against your skin makes your mind scream from agony. Too much, too much- Vinny doesn’t understand why you’re shaking so hard you may as well be seizing against him. 

He guides you to the living room. Your hands are still crackling with blood and you can feel Vinny’s breath on your hair, his arm around your shoulder- it hurts, you can feel it so much. The firing of a thousand neurons that makes you feel as if you’re burning alive. You want Vinny to let you go; as much as you love him, his hand lifting to run against your hair, you can’t stand it right now. You wriggle out of his grasp (the clothes against your skin are rough, your stomach churns with the sound of his hand rasping over your hair) and stand in the corner like a bad dog. The shaking hasn’t stopped, it’s just gotten worse. When your eyes move downward you still see the blood on your hands and you can feel the meat sliding down your throat (a memory? a dream?) and damnit, you just want to hide right now.

Vinny must know you’re overwhelmed. Overstimulated, he calls it. Sensory overload, he calls it. You just know that your ears are burning and your skin is on fire and everything’s so _much_ right now that you can’t even look at him, you can’t even do anything but back into the wall. Your back dragging against it as you slide down it sends flames up your spine and through your thin shoulder blades, but it’s fine because now you can wrap your arms around your head. Your forearms pressing into the side of your skull, your hands wrapped around the back of it, it’s comforting. Your knees pulled up to your chest and your feet tucked almost under your ass, it’s comforting. You feel safe like this.

You never like when this happens, as soon as you think about it after the fact. It makes you feel weak and pathetic but _god_ above does it feel good in the moment. Your arms muffle most of the sound of the room (the shuffle of Vinny’s feet, the crinkling of his jacket, the breaths from his chest because he’s trying to calm down too) and your head is shrouded in the darkness between your legs and your chest. The darkness chases away the light that makes your eyes water and ache. Safe. Safe. Your body is your own. You can hide like this.

You spend a few minutes like that, protecting yourself from the brightness and the sound. And Vinny, god bless Vinny, he stands and shuts the lights off. He moves quietly and calmly despite how you know his heart must be pounding right now. Your best friend settles in front of you, waiting for you to come out of the fit of sensory bullshit. He looks sad and scared, when you manage to look up, but he’s still so patiently waiting on you to calm down. “Evan?” He asks, in that broken voice of his. His hand moves out just a little before shrinking back. 

“Why me?” You ask back. It's so quiet, crawling out of your throat because you don't quite remember wanting to say anything. Once that bridge is crossed, though, the words start spilling out of your mouth like a flood. “Why- why me? I keep losing _time_ , Vin- there's- I don't know who’s blood this is, and I keep- I keep waking up in new places and,” the flood sputters when you feel his hand cradling your face, then begins anew when your mind continues reeling. “I'm so afraid I'm gonna wake up with a body under me or something, Vin.” You finally admit. “The cops won't- won't accept the whole _demon takin’ me over_ thing. Then I'm just the crazy guy they lock up and- I don't wanna be locked up.”

“You won't be, Ev.” Vinny says with a sad voice. The way he shifts closer betrays that he's afraid of the exact same thing you are- you being taken away, thrown into some asylum because you aren't in control. HABIT would slaughter its way out of it, you know, but you're still terrified of losing yourself. You aren't insane. 

Vinny doesn't say much, after that. He moves closer and gently wraps his arm around you- at some point he took the loud jacket off, you guess, because his soft bare arm presses against the back of your neck in such a caring way- and sits with you. The both of you sit there, watching the blood on your hands dry and crack, watching the sunrise fill the room with a sickly yellow light.

**Author's Note:**

> if kafka can give a cockroach his depression then i can give evan whatever the fuck i want.  
> title from doing time by avenged sevenfold.


End file.
